Online Exhibition of Presidential Campaign Commercials at Museum of the Moving Image Website

NEW YORK.- Acclaimed in previous seasons as "priceless" (Newsday), "innovative" (Los Angeles Times), "addictive" (New York Times) and "the finest collection of presidential campaign ads ever assembled" (Wall Street Journal), the online exhibition The Living Room Candidate launches its 2008 edition on September 12, 2008. Curated and hosted by Museum of the Moving Image on its website (http://movingimage.us/livingroomcandidate or http://livingroomcandidate.org), The Living Room Candidate offers more than
300 commercials from every presidential election since the start of television campaign advertising in 1952.

The redesign and relaunch are made possible through a $435,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation, which will highlight The Living Room Candidate on Thinkfinity.org, Verizon's free comprehensive program and online portal that provides more than 55,000 educational resources for teachers, parents, students and afterschool programs.

Among the new features of this election cycle's Living Room Candidate are:

ongoing tracking of John McCain and Barack Obama commercials and third-party advocacy and independent commercials as they come out

access to both official, broadcast commercials and web video/third party commercials from a single timeline interface

commentaries on the Museum's selection of the top campaign commercials of all time

annotated playlists of commercials, past and present, selected by noted political consultants, cultural critics, scholars, and media celebrities, including John Dickerson (chief political correspondent, Slate) and Leslie Savan (author of The Sponsored Life)

a function that enables site visitors to create their own playlists of commercials

activities that allow visitors to explore the decision-making process of ad design and production

upgraded classroom tools for students and educators

"In the years since it first went online in 2000, The Living Room Candidate has become an institution in its own right and one of our signature programs," said Rochelle Slovin, Director of Museum of the Moving Image, the only museum dedicated to the art and industry of all of screen culture, from the earliest silent films to today's video games. "The Living Room Candidate is timely, informative, and irresistibly entertaining -- and it seamlessly combines the Museum's key subject areas of film, television, and digital media."

"With its strong educational component and online platform, The Living Room Candidate is a perfect match for Verizon Foundation's signature program for educators and the literacy community, Thinkfinity.org," said Patrick Gaston, President of Verizon Foundation. "We are proud to have enabled the redesign of The Living Room Candidate and delighted to count Museum of the Moving Image among our outstanding educational partners."

The Living Room Candidate demonstrates how advertising techniques and styles have evolved over the years, even as basic strategy has remained the same. The exhibition includes such landmark ads as the groundbreaking "Eisenhower Answers America" spots of 1952, the notorious "daisy girl" ad from Lyndon Johnson's 1964 campaign, Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" ads from 1984, and the controversial attack ads run by George Bush's 1988 campaign. Site visitors may also see how the strategies and techniques of persuasion have been played out more recently in third-party and web ads, such as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and MoveOn commercials from the 2004 election.